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Friday, March 22, 2013

Obamacare a detriment to hiring, recovery | Las Vegas Review-Journal

What’s slowing down job creation in Nevada, where the real unemployment rate — counting part-timers who would prefer full-time work, and those who’ve given up looking — averaged 20.3 percent in 2012?

One prime suspect is ObamaCare, with its mandate that employers with 50 full-time employees or more must offer health insurance — not just some high-deductible coverage for catastrophes, but a costly package including every kind of politically correct bell and whistle.

Left-leaning college professors with guaranteed government pensions and a belief that the end justifies the means may say it’s a minor problem, but the fact is that small companies with any number of employees between 25 and 100 — that’s a lot of employers — are eyeing the 50-worker ObamaCare mandate and making their desperate survival plans accordingly.

How do you think a Reno resident would fare today if he or she applied for a job at a local Jimmy John’s sandwich shop? The chain was growing in 2011. Then Timothy Wulf, a retired economics professor who owns JJ of Reno, operator of the shops in Northern Nevada, realized his staff of more than 100 put him right in the bull’s-eye for the ObamaCare mandate.

So Mr. Wulf says he began cutting workers 18 months ago — and not because business was bad. He sold one of his three stores, retrained workers to handle more duties and invested in labor-saving technologies. Automated online ordering, for example, replaced the equivalent of two full-time workers. (Where are they working now, do you suppose?) Given the number of part-timers working at any sandwich shop, Mr. Wulf managed to reduce his work force to 42 full-time equivalent workers.

So, beginning to next year, who will be able to offer a sandwich of the sa